The 4 Stages of Learning to Read Sheet Music
1. Learning to Read Notes 👓
At the start of any musicians journey into music, the first stage in the process of reading is understanding how to read the notes and learning to recognise them quickly.
There are several ways that are often used to do this and some are more affective than others for long term progress. Many musicians use mnemonic to find the notes on the page. For example, for the treble clef (the way we generally read notes for the right hand on the piano) you may have heard the mnemonic “Every Good Boy Deserves Food” (or something similar to this) to remember the notes that make up the lines on the page.
However, although this can be a quick way to find the notes, it’s not the most affective way for long term progress. The reason for this is because it adds an extra step into the process of finding the notes! If you are teaching a child to read the alphabet, we intuitively know that it wouldn’t make sense to learn a 13 word phrase with each word starting on alternate letter of the alphabet.
“A Cat Entered Greece In Knowledge…” = A (B) C (D) E (F) G (H) I (J) K…
Instead, a child learns more quickly by writing the letters, associating the letters with its sound and trying to construct simple words using them.
This is why I would recommend a different method for learning the notes and this is a process called “The Landmark System”. This method is the selection of two or three notes spaced out on the stave that you can work on actively remembering. Many beginner musicians are familiar with the note “Middle C” and what that looks like when reading a piece of music, and many will be able to instantly recognise it when seeing it. This is what we hope to achieve for more of the notes on the stave.
After selecting two or three notes (spaced out on the stave), you can then work out the notes that surround those notes when needed. Over time adding more and more landmark notes to remember will help accumulate an inherent knowledge of each of the notes without the need for an extra step!
2. Learning to Read Patterns 🔎
When each of the notes are familiar to you by themselves and you are able to recognise them and find them on the piano quickly. It’s important to build upon that by starting to recognise larger patterns. If we think of individual notes in the same way we think of individual letters in the alphabet, when we read a sentence, we don’t actually think about the individual letters…we think about the words that these letters make and the meaning of the sentence as a whole!
In music we want to try and do the same thing, initially you need to be able to recognise the notes, but beyond that we want to start recognising the shapes that these notes form. Doing this makes reading a much quicker process and allows us to rely more heavily on what we expect to see in the music, rather than trying to read every individual note.
There are many patterns that notes can form in a piece of music, such as;
Scales (a series of consecutive notes)
Intervals (the distance between two notes)
Phrasing (how long is the musical sentence)
Cadences (where does the phrase end and does it sound finished or not)
etc.
The most important pattern to understand, however, is the pattern of outlining chords. Music is written by combining chords with melodies and recognising the chords that are being used at any given moment allows you to more accurately predict which notes you are likely to see throughout that part of the music.
We can predict the chords that a piece of music might be using by knowing which scale the piece of music is using and what chords are likely to appear within that scale.
If we see the notes C, E and G in the music, then we can assume that the notes for this section are outlining a C major chord and this can inform us as to what notes we might see for the remainder of the time that the C major chord is being outlined (more C’s, E’s and G’s).
3. Understanding Context 🏜️
Seeing larger patterns, such as the chords (e.g. C major chord) will also tell us what quality of sound we are going to hear (e.g. major), what relationship this chord has to the scale (e.g. chord 1 - if using a C major scale) and which notes might cause tension if they don’t belong to the C major chord (e.g. the melody might use the note D and then drop to a C - causing a tension because a D doesn’t belong to a C major chord and then the release of that tension when the note drops to a C).
In this phase of reading, you are comfortably able to recognise the individual notes, recognise the patterns that these notes are forming and you are now trying to interpret how these shapes and patterns work together to form a piece of music. An individual note by itself doesn’t tell us very much, however, when we hear notes alongside each other we have a great deal more to work with.
Here is Bach’s Minuet in G with some patterns highlighted:
Minuet: A minuet is a type of dance that is played using 3 beats in each bar, it is similar in style to a waltz.
Key Signature: the key signature tells us that we are using a G major scale and this will help us narrow down the notes we are going to be using on the piano.
Chords: The first two bars outline a G major chord (G B D), the very first left hand chord is in fact a G major triad. Any leaps that we see are likely to be leaping to another note in the G major chord. Bar 3 is outlining a C major chord.
Passing Note: A passing note is a note that is used to travel from one chord note to another. In the left hand of the first two bars a passing note is used to travel from a G (in the first triad) to a B (which is also a chord note).
Scales: In both bar 1 and 3, a G major scale is used. When reading this we likely won’t need to read each individual note, just the notes we are travelling to and from. The first scale is from G to D and the second scale is higher on the piano, from C to G.
4. Conveying Meaning ❤️
At this stage, the process becomes much more about what the patterns in the music might mean and how you are going to interpret them. You are able to recognise the notes instantly, recognise patterns in the music quickly and understand how those patterns relate to the key, the scale, and the other patterns around it.
Now we’ve reached the fun part where you will be able to spend much of your time thinking about what these patterns mean and how they feel. If I return back to my analogy of reading a sentence….firstly we learn the alphabet (the notes), then we learn the words formed from the alphabet (the patterns), then we learn how to read sentences (the patterns as they relate to each other) and finally you learn to interpret the meaning of the sentence and the words become a vehicle and a way of conveying that meaning!
Here is how the patterns in the Minuet might be interpreted and conveyed:
Minuet: Minuets are a dance and they tend to have a strong beat 1 and a weaker beat 2 and 3 to give dancers a strong sense of pulse. They are also typically a little bit more lively than a waltz. So you may want to push through the music a little more but lean on beat 1 of each bar.
Key Signature: The key is major, this means that the music is likely to be more positive than if we were to use a minor scale (for example). There is no key changes or changes of scale so the music will sound very stable and we can play with a confident stable sound.
Chords: All of the chords are major chord so it will contribute to the piece’s consonant and positive sound. The first two bars and the 4th bar are Chord 1 (G major) so this will sound like home in bar three we venture to chord 4 (C major) so this will sound positive but perhaps more exploratory before returning to chord 1.
Passing Note: The passing note is rising from a G to a B so this will feel like the music is lifting, the A will add a little tension and will feel like it needs to keep moving to a note that belongs to the chord, so this may be an opportunity to push through the music a little.
Scales: The scales are ascending and arriving on chord notes at the top, this means that it will feel like it’s rising and arriving at its destination, we can push through these scales a little to make the top of the scale feel more like where we are leading towards. The first scale is from G to D and the second scale is higher on the piano, from C to G, so this second scale might feel like it is lifting even more than the first scale, we can help this by playing the second scale with a little more presence.
Learning to read music and successfully build up pattern recognition, requires time, practice and exposure to the same patterns in multiple different contexts. The important thing is to try to notice them.
Next time you are learning a piece of music, try to find patterns within the music:
What scale is the piece using?
What chords does it use?
Are there any scale patterns?
With practice and exposure you will soon start to notice that you are reading music as a way of finding meaning, in the same way we read a novel and find meaning from the words within.
Matthew Cawood
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